24 November, 2010

05 November, 2010

I'm not really sure how much wisdom, as opposed to humor, is embedded in this quote from [guess], but sometimes I think it's quite a lot:

This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy.

02 November, 2010

Today's mid-term election, like the 2008 election, is very Big News. Headline-spawning, anchor-hyperventilating, ratings-rescuing news. For months now, news outlets of all sorts have been dialing up the quantity and--well, the quantity of their coverage of races across the country. Every visible or audible move by candidates beyond inhaling and exhaling has been uploaded, scrutinized, interpreted, Tweeted and remixed. Reasonably well-dressed people have debated, scoffed at and walked out on each other on camera in the throes of election and political analysis. Commenters on innumerable web sites have ridiculed and dehumanized each other, the candidates and the reasonably well-dressed people. Reporting, commentary and gnashing of tooth and tusk concerning election outcomes will be hard to avoid today, tonight, tomorrow, and so on.

And that's too bad. Like vultures circling, it's an indicator that something has gone wrong. In a better world, political elections would not be such big news. Oh, they would be news. They would be important. But, they would not have the bile-generating, fury-inducing power that they have in many modern democracies. You might object that of course elections should be big news. They have a major impact on society and the lives of everyone in it! And I would agree. That is the problem. More specifically, the fact that "major impact" barely begins to describe the effect elections have on people living in this land (and, indeed, on people living in distant lands) is the problem. We are, most of us, made worse off by the fact that so much of our lives has become insinuated by the structures of government. Permission to adapt to changing circumstances is often not forthcoming in such a society. For, the contest between the civil and the political is a largely zero-sum one. The growing scope for politics and its trappings (laws, regulations, etc.) means a shrinking scope for civil (i.e., voluntary) give and take.

But, it is this very growth in the scope of politics within our society that makes the outcome of elections all the more momentous--and therefore more newsworthy. Given the potent power government wields over Americans and, as important, the future powers precedent seems to reserve, it is tragically rational for us to take a keen, perhaps manic, interest in the details of these periodic scrambles for political posts. And so, it is quite appropriate for the news media to build entire sets around the coverage of said scrambles. It's not every day that so much is decided about how we may or may not lawfully live our lives.

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Power

"The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase."John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859